A new alcohol powder is set to be released in the US come fall. Branded "Palcohol," the powder is designed to be added to water by the ounce, resulting in mixed drinks like margaritas and kamikazes, or straight vodka.

News of the brand first started circulating on Monday, when outlets discovered Palcohol's site, following its label approval by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The labels were intended for 100-ml packets of powder that were 44-51 percent alcohol by weight (56-65 percent by volume); they instructed would-be imbibers to "just add water." Palcohol is meant to be more portable than alcohol's usual forms, which often involve a lot of glass or aluminum and water.

Palcohol will purportedly come in six versions: two straight spirits (vodka and Puerto Rican rum) and four cocktails (cosmopolitan, mojito, lemon drop, and "powderita"). To the inevitable question of "can you snort it?" Palcohol answers "don't do it! It is not a responsible or smart way to use the product," as if that has ever stopped anyone who snorts things from snorting anything.

Palcohol's predecessors

While Palcohol's possible, eventual existence is throwing everyone for a loop, it appears powdered alcohol has existed, at least in theory, on the fringes of the substance world for a while. The first US patent (3,436,224) for powdered alcohol was filed in 1964 by Harold E. Bode of Cleveland, Ohio, and granted in 1969. It describes a number of water-soluble substances for creating alcoholic beverages.

According to the patent, the process involved dehydrating a "starch-based polysaccharide material until the moisture con ten [sic] is less than 0.75%," cooling that material to a "food flavor vapor-sorbing temperature." The next step is "exposing the said dehydrated material to anhydrous ethanol," and, if desired, to "one or more anhydrous food/beverage flavors from the group comprising carbon dioxide, and aroma volatiles from cereals, fruits or vegetables." In short, dehydrate some carbs, cool them, expose them to anhydrous ethanol and, if you want, add some flavorings, and voila—alcohol in Kool-Aid form.

The resulting products would be dry and reconstitutable "beverage powders." The patent also specifically mentions "beer beverage powder," one with "anhydrous malt syrup solids," and "volatile beer flavorings and aromas."

But apparently, this approach didn't work brilliantly. Gen Foods Corp followed this patent with its own, filed in 1972 and granted in 1974, dissed the product in the previous patent, saying it produced a cloudy and "undesirably sweet" beverage with "relatively low levels of alcohol fixation" that needed "excessive amounts of carbohydrate fixative." The product was also described as too viscous with poor appearance and texture.

Instead, Gen Foods Corp proposed a flowable powder using dextrins as the carbohydrate, which could produce a substance that was up to 60 percent ethanol by weight. When mixed with water, the powder would produce a "low-viscosity, clear, colorless" alcohol. Gen Foods Corp's patent also cites a British patent, GB1138124, which is not available online.

Alcoholic powders never quite made it to market in the US, even though the patents in question should have expired at least 20 years ago, throwing the market open to anyone. In 2008, rumors circulated that a company named Pulver Spirits would release an alcoholic powder, but all that remains of the company are third-party mentions on various forums and blogs; its site is now defunct.

Europe, on the other hand, has approached alcoholic powder slightly more directly. One company, Subyou, appears to have once sold powdered alcohol (circa 2005) online. Now, per the company's site, it sells powdered energy drinks. A group of Dutch students scandalized the media in 2007 with Booz2Go, 20-gram packets of powder that produced a three-percent alcohol beverage when mixed with water. One of the students told Reuters that the powder form of the product would allow them to sell to underage kids (the legal drinking age in the Netherlands was 16 at the time, but is now 18 as of January 2014).

The most recent example of alcohol powder is not instant, but can be added to juice for a fast-tracked brewing cycle that makes a beverage of 14 percent alcohol in 48 hours. The product, called Spike Your Juice, was originally sold in August on firebox.com; originally, it was only sold to the EU, but is now available on Amazon.

Inebriation in powder form, still to come

This brings us to Palcohol, which, upon its flurry of media attention, had its TTB approval revoked. According to the company's site, the problem is not Palcohol's questionable product, but rather "a discrepancy on our fill level, how much powder is in the bag." The TTB itself would not further clarify on the revocation, according to CNN.

Palcohol expects to start shipping its product in the fall, noting that "no samples will be released ahead of time."

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

Hm. Anyone know if this could (in a higher alcohol concentration) make an effective, yet easily transportable, disinfectant for traveling or remote areas? Or if there's anything like that already available?

Could you add this to an already alcoholic drink to make it more alcoholic? If the flavor difference in such a drink is nominal this could be terribly misused. Used to get someone blackout drunk and things go down hill from there.

So, who wants to bet that the 'fill level discrepancy' issue, relatively late in the approval process, turns out to be "Senator Family Values turned on the TV, heard some talking head talking about it, and called our office so full of rage that his face probably looked like a giant comedy prune with eyes as he screamed us out"?

(As for portable disinfectants, crystalline iodine has an effectively unlimited shelf life in a sealed container, and forms a fairly peppy antimicrobial solution when water is added. If more water is added, it suffices to purify the water, mostly. Taste is pretty lousy; but efficacy per unit weight is good. Unfortunately, it's a reagent in some meth recipes, so you may get some nasty looks if you go hunting too enthusiastically. If you wanted an alcohol-based one, pure, or nearly pure, alcohol in a lightweight plastic bag/satchet/bottle should do the trick. Even basic pharmacy-brand rubbing alcohol is north of 90% alcohol, it's really only the beverage grade stuff that contains a lot of water and comes in glass.)

Hm. Anyone know if this could (in a higher alcohol concentration) make an effective, yet easily transportable, disinfectant for traveling or remote areas? Or if there's anything like that already available?

It'll depend on the minimum amount of water needed to dissolve the powder the alcohol is stored in.

Given that the label suggests that 5 ounces of water gives 12% alcohol, 1 ounce of water would be around 60% alcohol. If that level of dilution works, then it is usable as a disinfectant. Will just have to wait until the product is available to see what alcohol levels are achievable. Ordinary high proof bottled alcohol will have lower weight for backpacking though. According to that label, 56% of the product weight is liquid alcohol, the rest is the absorbent material it is stored in.

Get a plastic bottle of 190 proof moonshine or medical alcohol as this liquid form will be 40%+ lighter, even with the plastic water bottle included in the total weight.

As far as mixing drinks, this is equivalent to moonshine. Take 5 ounces of water, add 5 ounces of 190+ proof 'shine and you have "regional vodka".

Basic vodka is simply pure ethanol distilled from potato mash, then cut with water, the specific source of the water decides the quality and type. Yes, other things are used to make vodka, but the real stuff is potato moonshine, the others are simply fakes.

I was wondering what the difference between this and anhydrous alcohol was. Thanks for clearing that up. Really, this doesn't do anything different from any other powdered drink mix except that it brings its own alcohol along for the ride. You could probably make your own with current drink mixes.

Yes. Commercial iodine solutions or somesuch, I'd imagine. Unless you're a hypochondriac you'd only need a tiny bottle for the unlikely event of an injury, and transporting such a small container would not be a hindrance.

This scares the shit out of me. The things stupid people will do with this will be epic.

Good news its a suppository!

Thankfully, I never explored this aspect of 'greek life'; but frat 'bro's of my acquaintance tell me that 'butt chugging' is something that has a long and sordid history with existing alcoholic beverages.

(Incidentally, aside from the obvious 'WTF? I don't even... why?' factor, Serious Don't Do This: if you drink too much, your tendency to vomit helps reduce the odds of lethal alcohol poisoning. If you, um, butt chug too much, your intestines will continue absorbing merrily even if you vomit your stomach empty and your BAC will keep climbing until excretion catches up with the supply. Just hope that your obituary is written by someone with a willingness to politely elide certain details.)

This scares the shit out of me. The things stupid people will do with this will be epic.

Good news its a suppository!

Thankfully, I never explored this aspect of 'greek life'; but frat 'bro's of my acquaintance tell me that 'butt chugging' is something that has a long and sordid history with existing alcoholic beverages.

(Incidentally, aside from the obvious 'WTF? I don't even... why?' factor, Serious Don't Do This: if you drink too much, your tendency to vomit helps reduce the odds of lethal alcohol poisoning. If you, um, butt chug too much, your intestines will continue absorbing merrily even if you vomit your stomach empty and your BAC will keep climbing until excretion catches up with the supply. Just hope that your obituary is written by someone with a willingness to politely elide certain details.)

This was actually a problem at my high school. Tampons dipped in vodka. Things didn't end well.

This scares the shit out of me. The things stupid people will do with this will be epic.

Good news its a suppository!

Thankfully, I never explored this aspect of 'greek life'; but frat 'bro's of my acquaintance tell me that 'butt chugging' is something that has a long and sordid history with existing alcoholic beverages.

(Incidentally, aside from the obvious 'WTF? I don't even... why?' factor, Serious Don't Do This: if you drink too much, your tendency to vomit helps reduce the odds of lethal alcohol poisoning. If you, um, butt chug too much, your intestines will continue absorbing merrily even if you vomit your stomach empty and your BAC will keep climbing until excretion catches up with the supply. Just hope that your obituary is written by someone with a willingness to politely elide certain details.)

This was actually a problem at my high school. Tampons dipped in vodka. Things didn't end well.

I take it that the students didn't realize that you can smell alcohol on somebody's breath not because they swallowed it; but because it's pretty volatile and the lungs are a superb gas exchange membrane, so even the (rather ghastly and painful sounding) expedient of direct absorption through external mucosa isn't going to conceal much?

(Obviously, the effect of oral consumption isn't zero, especially for things like beer which often have all sorts of other components to their distinctive smell and not as much alcohol per unit volume; but the 'basically ethanol; but with enough water to keep the tax man happy' beverages show the effect quite strongly.)

Could you pass a breathalyzer if you simply ingested the powder and then drank water to mix it in your stomach?

Nope. The breathalyzer works because it is detecting alcohol passed from your blood stream to your lungs in an effort at excretion. I guess it might work if you tested soon enough after the ingestion, but that would likely be before you felt the effects.

Out of curiosity, would it be possible to have only the alcohol without any flavorings? That could make a really kick-ass cocktail...

Unflavored ethanol is widely available in liquor outlets ... it is marketed under the beverage name "vodka". Strictly speaking vodka is ethanol distilled from potato mash, but it is often misapplied to ethanol from other sources cut with unflavored water.

One of the "flavors" mentioned is vodka ... essentially, no flavor included.